Gay men and the property ladder in Singapore

Hello! You know I love being nasty and cruel to idiots on the internet, so here's a story that a friend from Singapore has shared recently on Facebook and I wrote some pretty nasty remarks. It is a story featured on All Singapore Stuff about how gay men are locked out of the HDB housing system - however, it was extremely badly written and the comments left on the website were overwhelmingly negative. The gay man who wrote the article wants to buy a HDB flat but because he hasn't reached the age of 35 yet, he isn't eligible to purchase the flat as a single person and feels penalized, having to pay a lot of rent on the private market when that money could have gone towards a deposit for the purchase of a HDB flat. I am gay and have multi-million dollar property portfolio here in London, so be warned: I'm not sympathetic at all.

Don't we all want to purchase our dream home?

The geography of Singapore

What irks me about this article is that the gay man in question didn't look at the context - sure he wants to own his own home, don't we all. But he is in Singapore, the third most densely populated country in the world. What is striking about that list is that Singapore is third behind Macau and Monaco - that's not quite a fair list as Monaco has a very, very porous border with France - no border guards are going to ask to look at your passport as you stroll over into France as they are both in the EU. So the only people who are desperate for a Monaco address are mega-rich billionaires keen to go into tax exile by officially living in Monaco - stroll just a few hundred meters into France and the property prices drop dramatically the moment you step into French territory. But if you are living on the French side of the border, then it doesn't matter if you are say a cleaner or a waiter since you pay very little tax anyway - it is only the mega-rich who are heavily taxed in France. So even if you are a poor Monacan citizen and can't afford to buy a property in Monaco itself - you would just buy somewhere a few hundred meters across the border in France. People in Macau can pretty much do the same thing if they don't mind living in Zhuhai across the border in China. Singaporeans however can't simply go into property exile in Johor as Malaysia doesn't want an exodus of poorer Singaporeans inflating the property market in Johor. Incidentally, Singapore is now ranked even higher on that population density list than Hong Kong - wow.

"The kitchen ratio"

So whilst Singapore is not number one on that list (for now), Singaporeans are definitely in the worst possible situation when it comes to the population density crisis as there is no friendly hinterland for them to escape to. The population in Singapore is still growing by the day, due to migration mostly from China but the amount of land available for housing is limited. In this situation, the government is forced to build social housing in a very efficient manner, making the most use of the limited land area to house as many people as family. Thus the solution is to give priority to family units with children, averaging about 4 to 5 people per household. This is an efficient solution because the family unit would share facilities like the toilets and kitchen - contrast that to a block of flats that is built for either singles or couples: such a flat would be rare in Singapore but fairly common in cities like New York or London. Each flat unit would contain a toilet and kitchen as these are basic amenities - such a flat would represent a poor use of limited land. Let's look at the kitchen ratio: if you have only one person using a kitchen instead of 4 or 5, then that's very inefficient use of that kitchen. So going by the kitchen to user ratio, in land scarce densely population Singapore, the government will have to do whatever they can to make sure you create the most efficient use of the housing they build and they achieve that by giving priorities to families with children. Thus in their defence, the HDB are making the best of a really difficult situation.

HDB flats were built for families in mind.

Thus if you're single in Singapore, you're expected to live with your parents until you can afford to move out so the kitchen ratio is kept as efficient as possible. Otherwise if you are going to rent a room, you'll be expected to at least share a flat/house with a few others, so the kitchen ratio is going to be efficient - if you want to have a kitchen to yourself, that is possible of course but it is going to cost you a lot in a city like Singapore. Don't forget, Singapore is one of the richest countries in the world and there's no shortage of rich people there - so if you're very rich, then you can ignore the kitchen ratio and buy whatever you want on the private market. Heck, you could even buy a huge house with three kitchens and live there by yourself if you can afford it. However, if you are dependent on the government to provide affordable housing, then you have to respect their need for efficiency when it comes to the kitchen ratio especially when resources are limited, as in the case of Singapore. If you're not happy to abide by the rules set by the government, then the simple solution is to simply not depend on their help for affordable housing: earn enough money to get on the property ladder in the private market. Hence if you want the government's help, then you accept it on their terms, not yours.

Is it about making babies or efficiency in the housing market?

The current HDB rules do not allow singles to buy until the age of 35 - now this rule does discriminate against anyone single whether they are gay, straight, bisexual, transgender or however else they wish to define their sexuality. Is there a way to modify the rules so as to maintain an efficient kitchen ratio? Of course - as long as there are four or five people living in the flat, the kitchen ratio is maintained regardless of whether these four or five people are a traditional family unit or not. There has been various form of congestion management schemes to help ease traffic jams during rush hours in cities: imagine if all car owners got into their cars and tried to drive into town in the morning rush hour, the results would be predictable. However, if you could persuade more efficient use of the cars by encouraging car pooling, then it would greatly reduce the number of cars on the road. Some countries have introduced a high-occupancy vehicle lane to give priorities to cars with 2 or more passengers, whilst others have gone as far as to impose higher tolls on single-occupancy vehicles. How about implementing a similar system when it comes to housing to ensure that the property is fully occupied? That way, it doesn't matter who's living there - they don't need to be related by blood, as long as the kitchen ratio is maintained. This can be implemented through a form of property tax: single occupants of large properties would be penalized though taxation whilst allowing single adults to form ad hoc family units for their living arrangements.

How many people use the kitchen in your home?

This then begs another question: would a relaxation on the current criteria away from families having babies to merely focusing on achieving 'kitchen ratio efficiency" make the already perilously low birth rate drop any further? The answer is that I doubt it would have any impact at all. The government have already given Singaporeans loads of incentive and encouragement to have babies and these have very limited uptake: it seems that young Singaporeans are simply ignoring these incentives and doing what they like, when they feel ready for it. In light of this change of culture, the government may as well pick a lower hanging fruit: instead of desperately trying to fight the losing battle of raising the birth rate, they can deal with inefficiencies in the housing market. They would hardly be the first government to do so - the current UK government has been trying to address this issue for years: it is expensive and time-consuming to try to build new social housing, but you can make sure the current stock is more efficiently allocated and utilized through the controversial under-occupancy penalty (aka the 'bedroom tax'). This is simply a question of picking your battles, some problems are easier to solve than others. So ideally, the Singapore government should allow singles (of any age) to get together to form ad hoc family units in order to purchase HDB flats, on the basis that these flats would be occupied to their maximum capacity. The fact is people who are single aren't going to get married just to get on the housing ladder in Singapore - there are far more complex reasons as to why they are still single and prefer not to get married.

Don't take your parents' goodwill for granted. 

But going back to the article in question, yes this gay man doesn't get along with his parents - well join the club. I don't exactly get along with my parents either and I never did, even from a young age. It was only moving 8 time zones away that allowed a more formal, distant, less antagonistic relationship to develop - but in reality, that means that because I barely ever talk to them, we don't fight and I have not lived at home with my family since the age of 21, when I finished NS and left for university. The irony is that my parents are not even homophobic at all, they appear to be fairly open minded about the whole gay thing - yet we just simply do not get along. However, even if you do get along with your parents and choose to live with them as a working adult, you shouldn't be  treating them as 'free accommodation' whilst you save up a deposit for your first property! Children who live with their parents should be expected to contribute towards the monthly household bills - help pay the mortgage if there is one, pay their share of the utility bills and food expenditure, that would be the decent thing to do. So for this gay man to think that he would have saved a lot of more money if he had been living with his parents, that's unrealistic as those who do live with their parents would have at least given their parents some of their earnings over the years, rather than just treat their parents' home as a free hotel.

Parents shouldn't be expected to support their children indefinitely.

You're unlikely to get a mortgage in your 20s. 

Here's another big hole in this gay man's argument: he says he is in his early 20s and he wants to get on the property ladder, well that's not going to happen even in a gay-friendly country like the UK. Let's look at what it would take to get a mortgage in Singapore: there are two things you need before you can think about making a purchase with a mortgage. You need a substantial deposit and then you need a high enough income to prove that you can repay the loan. Hence the amount the banks are willing to lend you depends on how much you are currently earning: so the higher your salary, the more you can borrow for your mortgage. This is why people on low-income jobs struggle to even get on the property ladder because the banks are unwilling to lend them the money in the first place. Now a young man in his early 20s is highly unlikely to earn enough to afford any kind of property in Singapore simply because starting salaries even for graduates of good universities are pretty low and what most Singaporeans do in order to boost their credit rating is to obtain a mortgage as a married couple as their joint-earning power makes them a lot more attractive to the banks. Even in the West, one tends not to think about getting on the property ladder in your 20s because you're waiting for your 30s: after at least ten years in the working world, your salary at 35 is going to be a lot higher than whatever you earned when you were 25. That's a more realistic time to go shopping for a new home, when you can actually afford one.

And what about this 'house fund' of S$100,000?

And then we come to the part that I find unbelievable, "I did jobs help here and there and managed to save up a home fund of about 100K. Which is enough for a HDB down payment, yet I'm homeless". He's not homeless for crying out aloud - he's renting at the moment and can afford to rent. A homeless person is someone who is literally sleeping in the street because they can't afford to pay the rent - does this idiot even know what the word 'homeless' means? He can't afford to buy his own home - that doesn't make him homeless. In any case, S$100,000 is a sizable sum of money, it is not something that you manage to save up by doing jobs "here and there". Either this young man is in a very well paid job that has allowed him to earn that amount of money simply by being very good at his job or he has had a windfall (eg. the death of a grandparent might result in an inheritance). We can work out his age in fact: he said he has to rent for 12 years before he is old enough at 35 to buy a HDB flat - hence 35 - 12 = he is currently 23 years old. If he is Singaporean, then he would have had to serve NS at the age of 18 - which makes me think that he is either still in university or he has entered the workforce without a degree. How do you earn S$100,000 as a university student or as a non-graduate in Singapore today? Please let me do some mathematics for you to rip yet another huge hole in this stupid guy's story.

How does a young guy get hold of that much money then?

Three quite implausible scenarios

Scenario 1: This guy completed his A levels at the age of 18, then served 2 years NS till the age of 20. Upon completing his NS, we know he is estranged from his family and thus he entered the workforce immediately after his NSF. If he has amassed $100,000 in just three years, then he must have saved on average $33,000 a year. But wait, he said he has paid about $10,000 in rent a year and let's add in another $7,000 a year on living costs (food, clothes/shoes, phone/internet, medical bills, entertainment/sports - all that in one of the world's most expensive cities). So according to this calculation, this guy managed to earn S$50,000 a year (S$4,167 a month) on average for the last three years, despite only having A levels as his highest qualifications. Wow, that's pretty good going for a young man who isn't even a graduate and thus cannot do any kind of professional job that would require a degree. How does he make over S$4,000 a month as an unskilled worker when a cashier/crew member at McDonald's Singapore is paid only $1,000 a month and even managers make about $2,500? He would be making even more than a restaurant manager in McDonald's in Singapore and with only three year's work experience under his belt and absolutely no professional qualifications.

Scenario 2: This guy did went to a poly after his O levels, completed his poly diploma at the age of 19, then served NS for 2 years and completed his NS at the age of 21. So that gave him just 2 years to amass his fortune of S$100,000 - so that means he saved on average of $50,000 a year. Now if we add his rent plus other living costs on top o that figure, that means he made on average S$67,000 a year (S$5,583 a month) as a poly diploma holder, without a degree. Again, that's a pretty impressive figure. When you consider that starting salaries for diploma holders in Singapore is around $1878, it is virtually impossible that he can somehow average $5583 a month in his first two years of work. Do you smell a rat? I sure do, but let's look at scenario 3 where things get even more ludicrous if he was a full time student at NUS.

Scenario 3: This guy did his A levels, then served 2 years of NS followed by 3 years at a local university like NUS - he may be still a student there if he is doing a 4 year course, so let's assume that he has been a full time university student since his ORD. That means he managed to earn that pot of $100,000 whilst working part-time as a university student, whilst still finding an additional S$17,000 for rent and living expenses. Oh and on top of that, he had to pay about S$100,000 in fees (based on NUS average). This means has has had to have generated S$251,000 in income working part time in those three years, the equivalent of earning S$6,972 a month working only part time is virtually impossible when you consider the kind of workload a typical university student has. If he was a part time tuition teacher say, giving 1 hour of tuition a day during the week and 3 hours a day during the weekend, 11 hours a week and that would be about 47 hours a month - he would need to charge about S$194 an hour for that kind of tuition which is unheard of even in kiasu-Singapore where the best tuition teachers command huge fees - but a part time student at NUS is hardly likely to be in that league: those are the teachers who have had decades of experience and know the MOE's system inside out. A young university student simply doesn't have that kind of expertise or experience. Only very experienced MOE trained teachers giving tuition to JC students could command up to $95/hour - a typical NUS student giving tuition would at best command a rate of at best about $50 an hour. How the hell is he earning $194/hour working just part time then?

He is an unreliable witness.

The bottom line is that the figures simply do not add up. I am a gatekeeper, this is what I do - I look at someone's story and I take it apart by checking if the figures add up. The best case scenario is that this guy indeed a high flyer who can make a lot of money either without much formal qualifications or better still, simply by working part time whilst at university. If that's the case, he's clearly outperforming his peers by a very long way and is on track to become a multi-millionaire in the near future, then he can easily afford his beautiful dream home on the private property market. Who needs a HDB flat when you're earning that kind of money? But if he is really such a brilliant high flyer, then why would he write such a pathetic, pessimistic piece to bemoan his situation? In a worse case scenario, he's either lied about his age (oh it is so gay to pretend to be younger than you are) and is probably more like 32 or he has grossly exaggerated the actual size of his 'home fund' (again, it is so gay to exaggerate the size of your assets). Or perhaps he does have a 'home fund' of $100,000 but he lied about how he had acquired it - perhaps it is no more than an inheritance left to him by a loving grandparent rather than something he managed to earn doing jobs 'here and there'. As a gatekeeper, I don't believe his story at all. Whilst some parts may be true, but there are so many holes in it that I have stopped believing him a long time ago - he is what we call an unreliable witness. So when you know someone has the propensity to lie, you have no idea when they are actually telling the truth and when they are lying, so you stop believing anything they say. 

I don't believe this is a true story at all.

Meet Yusra Mardini, then tell me you feel like crying. 

And the nail in the office was the line "I feel like crying." As if that was going to make people feel sorry for him! The fact is everyone living in Singapore faces the same challenges when it comes to getting on the property ladder and it is not like heterosexual couples who are married have it any easier - it costs a lot to raise children in Singapore today and even if they are able to get their hands on a HDB flat, it is not as if they are any better off when you factor in the fact that they are hemorrhaging money everyday for their children. Rather than expecting the government to move mountains for you, just so you can have affordable housing at a price you want (that's not going to happen), why not focus on something you do have control over: such as how highly skilled you become, because there is a direct correlation between your skills and your earning power. Keep improving yourself, learn a foreign language or three, attend some classes in your evenings or perhaps attend networking events relevant to your industry to make useful contacts. There is so much you can do to feel like you are doing something constructive to improve your situation rather than just feel sorry for yourself and cry. If crying ever solved any problems, I'd be the first to cry you a bucket of tears. But since I can't be there in Singapore to personally slap some sense into him, I'll instead introduce you all to Yusra Mardini, the Syrian refugee swimmer who participated in the 2016 Rio Olympics. After watching this clip, I dare you to ever feel sorry for yourself.

So whilst there is much the government in Singapore can do to improve efficiency in the way their stock of HDB flats is allocated and utilized, at the end of the day, you're never going to escape the fact that Singapore is one of the world's most densely populated country with an acute housing shortage. The only way to own property as a single person is to become fabulously wealthy or to move abroad - you know the way you Changi airport, Singapore isn't North Korea - no one is stopping you from leaving if that's what you want to do: so please go, if you think you'll be happier abroad. Most Singaporeans choose to stay in Singapore because of their families, but if this gay man is already estranged from his family, then he should have left Singapore a long time ago already as he has virtually no reason to stay in Singapore once you take his parents out of the equation. The only thing that is keeping him in Singapore is probably the fact that he cannot find a job in another country and given the way he isn't capable of telling a simple story without making me question his credibility, I won't be surprised if he treats job interview process with the same cavalier attitude.

Another possibility of course is that this story is entirely made up - thus totally discrediting the website which posted this story. This story is taken from All Singapore Stuff - a website with little credibility and it is not taken seriously by most. We don't have any real names or any evidence to prove that the protagonist is a real person and the numbers simply do not add up. It almost seems that this website is run by people who are trying to make the PAP look like the bad guys for discriminating against singles and gays - but the person coming up with the story clearly hasn't thought this one though. Discredit the PAP if you must, but at least make the effort to write well: if you want to invent a story, make it credible. Make sure the figures add up, provide enough detail to people will feel that the story is genuine. So for example, you could add little details like, "he is currently sharing a flat in Clementi with a few Malaysian students" or "he is currently working in the insurance industry as an underwriter" - it is not precise enough to identify him (if he wishes to remain anonymous) but it is the kind of detail that journalists would include just to make the story come to life for the reader. Furthermore, the PAP would only look at such a poorly written article and dismiss it as fake news - which begs the question then: who wrote this stinking pile of bullshit and which stupid editor thought it was a good idea to publish it?

So that's it from me for now. I hope I've done this story justice, let me know what you think. Many thanks for reading.